


The Eye of the Storm

by Hexiva



Category: Legion (TV)
Genre: Cold Weather, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, In Which They All Talk About Their Feelings (Finally), Multi, Post-Finale, Pre-OT3, Sharing Body Heat, Sharing a Bed, We can consider this my holiday fic even though there's no holidays in it, just a COZY WINTER FIC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:14:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21749599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hexiva/pseuds/Hexiva
Summary: David, Syd, and Farouk change the past - and then they wake up in the middle of a snowstorm in a mysterious wasteland. They find shelter, and must share a bed to stay warm. Snuggling ensues.
Relationships: Sydney "Syd" Barrett/Amahl Farouk | Shadow King/David Haller
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	The Eye of the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: Oops, I almost forgot to credit Versaphile for betaing this fic, and TheCarelessVoice for doing the Farsi translations. You're both invaluable.

He looks into Syd's eyes as he feels himself start to fade away. This is the end, he thinks, a sense of peace coming down upon him. This is it. 

His vision fades to black, and he lets himself go.

* * *

He wakes up to cold, leaking into his bones, freezing his skin. Is this what death feels like? he wonders. 

"David. David! You must wake up!"

He rolls over and hides his face from the light. "Just ten more minutes, Lenny. Just need a little more sleep ... "

A hand shakes his shoulder. _"_ _Bidar sho_ _!"_ Wake up. "You'll freeze. Must I drag you?"

He opens his eyes slowly, and a jolt of terror runs through him when he sees Farouk looking down at him. He studies the Shadow King's face. Suit and tie, no eyeliner. This is his Farouk, the one he made the deal with.

"He's alive?" asks another familiar voice. 

"Yes - but barely conscious," Farouk says. “Whatever happened must have hit him the hardest.”

"Fine." A pair of hands grabs him under the arms and hoists him up. David blinks blearily at the landscape in front of him. It’s all white. Blankness? No, snow. It’s snowing, the ground is blanketed in snow as far as he can see. "Let's get going." 

_"Aller où?"_ Farouk asks. "Unless you have some idea where we are."

"I don't. But what I do know is that unless we get moving somewhere, we're going to freeze to death."

Syd. That's who's talking. David smiles to himself. Syd is here. It's all right. He fades away again.

* * *

He opens his eyes, and up ahead he sees a crazy, ramshackle structure appearing out of the snowstorm, half beehive, half building. 

" . . . - can't be . . . Nonhuman origin . . . What is it?"

"Shelter," Syd's voice answers. 

David fades out again, and then they're walking through the entrance to the hive like structure. He blinks, wondering if he's dreaming. It's a hallucinogenic mixture of strangely organic shapes mixed with familiar human furniture. The entrance way is layers of paper, like a wasp's nest, but there are paintings hung on the walls, canvas cut into strange, many-sided shapes and painted with wild colors. A TV hangs from spider silk on the wall of the front room, playing static. Where a couch might be, there's instead a bird like nest of paper and silk webbing, paisley cushions sitting in its folds. The lamp sitting next to it starts out normal, and then branches into an organic spread of tree like branches, glowing with bioluminescent light, and then ends in a floral lampshade perched incongruously on top. Beyond the TV, there's a hexagonal window framed with honeycomb-wax.

"Syd," David manages. He's still cold. So cold. "Syd. Is this - is this real?"

Syd doesn't answer or meet his eyes. "He's still freezing," she says to Farouk. "We need to warm him up, fast. Is there anything around here that can start a fire?"

Farouk looks around. "My dear, in a place like this, how would we even begin to know? The whole place looks flammable."

Syd glances back at the paper hallway. "So, no fire. What do we do?"

Farouk steps towards the nest, lifting the edge of one of the silky sheets of webbing. "There's always . . . This."

David doesn't understand what he's saying, but something passes between Syd and Farouk, and then Syd is dragging him over to the nest. Farouk helps her lift him up. David falls back into the nest, lying amid soft pillows and silky sheets. 

He blinks in confusion as he sees Farouk climb into the nest with him. Syd looks at David, and the expression on her face hurts him. He can't read everything there. Guilt? Regret? Anger? Fear? David shuts his eyes.

The nest tilts slightly as a third weight is added to it, and then warm arms, half-covered by leather gloves, wrap around him. 

David curls into the warmth, his eyes shut, and another warm body curls along his back. Farouk takes David's hands in his, and David can feel the sensation slowly starting to seep back in to his frozen extremities. Syd pulls the silky webbing up around them, wrapping them up in a warm cocoon.

Slowly, he lets himself relax, his head resting on Syd's shoulder, Farouk pressed up against him, her arms around him and his arms tangled up with Farouk's. He takes a deep breath, breathing in their warmth. 

The woman who swore to destroy him and the man he tore apart the world to kill. His worst enemies. This should feel wrong. And yet - it doesn't.

"You saved my life," he says, eventually. "Are you - going to kill me now?" It would make about as much sense as anything in his life.

Farouk's arms tighten around him, and Syd stiffens against him. "No," Syd says. "We - we agreed. All of us. No more fighting."

Farouk laughs, softly. "If it was that easy, we could have done it a long time ago."

"Maybe you should have," Syd says. There's no venom in her voice, but it's unyielding. 

_"Oui,"_ Farouk says, quietly. "Perhaps I should have."

"I never thought I'd hear _you_ admit you should have done better," David says. He's too cold and tired to be angry. Perhaps they all are. 

Farouk chuckles softly near his ear. "Perhaps I'm changing. That's what you were searching for, isn't it? With all of this? Change."

"In a way," David says.

"I don't understand you anymore," Syd says, tiredly. "Either of you. One minute you're monsters and the next minute you're - " Her voice breaks suddenly, and she pulls David closer. "Here."

David presses his face into her collarbone. He thinks of Syd, looking him in the eyes and telling him _if we get lost, we get lost together._ He thinks about Syd looking down at him over the barrel of a gun. He thinks about Syd waiting for him, that whole long year he was away. He thinks about Syd shooting him in cold blood, in that aborted future Switch saved him from. "Maybe I don't know who I am either," he says. 

"Perhaps it comes of being a mutant. The three of us have lived other lives, in other bodies, in other minds," Farouk says. "Perhaps it's no wonder we are confused."

David thinks about that. Is Syd confused? Is _Farouk?_ "I didn't know confused was a thing that happened to _you,"_ he says to Farouk.

"Neither did I," Farouk says. He rests his head against David's shoulder. David feels warmer now, but he doesn't want to venture out of the blankets and the warmth of his enemies' embrace. There's so much he still wants to ask them, so many things he still doesn't understand. But he doesn't know where to start. 

Instead they rest together in silence. David shuts his eyes and listens to their breathing and the soothing static of the TV.

"Where do you think we are?" Syd asks, eventually.

"I dunno," David says. "Sheol, maybe."

"Some kind of other timeless space, like the one where the Time Demons dwelt, perhaps," Farouk suggests. 

"Are we stuck here forever?" Syd asks.

Farouk laughs, softly. "They say Hell is other people ... but then again, perhaps that is better than I deserve." He goes quiet for a moment. "I have not been able to use my powers since we arrived here."

"I know," Syd says, and David realizes that she's pressed up against him, skin to skin. 

David tries to reach out for his own abilities, for that wave of power that makes him feel like a god. "They're not - gone, I think. More like - sleeping." It's kind of nice, in this moment. It makes him feel almost normal, despite everything. He can still hear the voices of madness in his head, but at least right now it's only his own voice.

"It's strange, isn't it?" Farouk asks. "To be stripped of all our armor this way. Made mortal again."

"Made equal, maybe," Syd says. She pulls off one of her gloves, and then runs a bare hand down David and Farouk's intertwined arms, enjoying this stolen moment of touch. Her voice gets softer. "I wish we could have had this earlier."

"You and me?" David asks. He wants to reach out and touch her, but he's not sure if she'll bolt. Farouk holds him tightly, grounding him. His phantom limb, returned to him. "Or you and him?"

Syd's eyes flick past him to Farouk. "I'm not sure. Maybe both."

Both. David's not oblivious to the implications of their positions here, but it's too big to think about right now. "I wish - a lot of things. That's why I tried to - change it all. Do you think - do you think it worked? For the other us-es, somewhere out there?"

"I don't know," Syd says. "I lived another life already ... " She sighs, and lets her chin rest on David's head. "So much has happened since I last saw either of you. I don't know who I would tell anymore."

"The one thing we have now is time," Farouk says. "Tell us your story, my dear."

So Syd talks. She paints a story of a fairytale life, a childhood unmarred by violence or powers, Melanie and Oliver, the Wolf, Cynthia. 

"It all seemed so clear when I was there. And then ... I woke up, and I was still the same person." She stares out the window. "Just like this."

"Perhaps it's always like that," Farouk says. "One's life changes, and then the morning dawns, and life goes on."

Syd lifts her head to fix Farouk with a look over David's shoulder. "If we're telling stories, it's your turn. What happened to you? Why did you betray Division Three? What was the plan all along?"

"Plan?" Farouk says, as if rolling the word around his mind. _"_ _Naghshe_ ... Was there a plan? In the beginning, there was a plan. I planned to kill you both. I thought I could walk out and return to my life. And then David - was gone. That year, that long year - I thought you were dead. And I mourned you, and I did not understand why. I thought I was above such things. Such merely human connections."

David listens to all of this in silence. His back is to Farouk, but they're wrapped up together, skin to skin. David can feel Farouk's breath on his neck. And yet he knows they've been closer, all tangled up in one mind.

"You made everyone hate me," he says, softly.

"I was afraid," Farouk says. "I was seized by a new terror, that having finally understood how much you meant to me - that I had already destroyed you. That I had already hollowed you out, made you nothing but a shadow of myself."

David frowns and shifts away from him, into Syd's arms. "I'm not - broken. Not hollow."

"I know," Farouk says, putting a hand on his arm. _"Midoonam._ I don't want to change you. You are nothing like me, despite everything I've done to you. I thought Division Three could help, but I miscalculated, and you fled."

David says nothing, but he lets himself relax back into Farouk's arms. Farouk pulls the silky webbing up further over the three of them.

"So why did you turn on us?" Syd asks. "If you wanted to help?"

"The time traveler told me what happened in the alternate timeline, the one she saved you from," Farouk says, tapping David's arm to indicate him. "You killed him. I couldn't allow that. I thought I could take him on myself." He smiles, fondly. "But you have grown so strong."

"I thought I had to," Syd says, quietly. "I thought I was saving the world."

David curls up, resting his head on the cushions. "What happens if we get out? If we - get back to the world? Are you - will I - are you going to put me back in the hospital?"

"No," Syd says, putting an arm around him and squeezing him. "We'll - figure something out. We can just - talk. We haven't had a chance to in a long time."

"What about you?" David asks Farouk, without turning away from Syd. "Are you going to go back to - I don't know - killing people and stealing bodies?"

"No," Farouk says, shaking his head. "I am tired, my friends. I have become something else . . . But what? I don't know." He leans forward, his head resting on David's back. "Your turn, my dear. Tell us your story."

David shuts his eyes and focuses on the warmth of his two bedmates, seeping into him, giving him strength. "When I left Division Three, I wanted ... something else. I felt better, but only as long as I didn't think, so I - didn't. I don't - I don't know what I was thinking." David laughs, bitter and wry and sad. "I guess I never do. I didn't want revenge - or - I did, but mostly I wanted an escape." He's silent for a moment. "Is that what this is? Some way my brain found to let me - out."

"If so, your brain took the two of us with you," Syd says.

David bites his lip, opening his eyes. "But what if this isn't real? What if this is all - some kind of dream or hallucination?"

"It's real," Syd says, flatly, and she reaches out to squeeze his hand.

David shuts his eyes again, squeezing her hand back. If this is a dream, it's a good one.

"Before I regained my body, I thought like this," Farouk says. "I wondered if I was truly - who I am, and not some fragment of you that had deluded itself into thinking I was separate. Sometimes I still feel so. My body is proof, but the thought has hatched, and it will not be put back in the egg."

Farouk's voice is soft. Lying here with him, the both of them made mortal, Farouk seems strangely - human. David feels that way too, the absence of his powers making the world seem smaller. His world right now is just Syd and Farouk and their voices and touch.

"At least we're free now," David says. "Both of us. We can - find out what we're really like." He lifts his head and looks at Syd. "Maybe you can, too?"

"I thought I knew who I was, before all of this happened," Syd says, quietly. "Now - I don't know."

"Do you think we're going to get out of here?" David asks. "I don't even know - where we are."

"Perhaps the storm will ease with time," Farouk says. "In the meantime, we should test and recover."

David shuts his eyes. "Yes. Rest sounds . . . Good."

Curled up in their soft cocoon, they let themselves be lulled to sleep by the sound of static and each other's breath.


End file.
